


Uncertainty and Uneasiness

by TinoSquint



Series: The Angst in the Episodes [2]
Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, like a whole lot of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 16:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11338860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinoSquint/pseuds/TinoSquint
Summary: The Man in the SUV revealed something about Booth's personal life that created some tensions between him and Brennan. This story examines how each partner feels about that tension after the case has been closed.





	Uncertainty and Uneasiness

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to give a heads up that this chapter contains information from "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole" since the characters have those memories at this point. If you haven't seen that far through the series, proceed with caution. I'll be pulling from that episode's flashbacks throughout this series because I think it enhances the character development.

Last case she laughed at his cosmic balance sheet, but this time she tried to help him cope with the burden of taking another life. She gave him all the physical markers that meant that the man with the camera bag was certainly Farid Masruk. When that wasn’t enough for him to pull the trigger, she made Farid turn around. She enabled Booth to take the shot, to end another life, knowing that it had to be done.

_“You saved so many people, Booth. Don’t forget that.”_

His mind wanders to their conversation at the bar. He told her taking a life wasn’t a reason to celebrate, and instead of arguing against his assertion, Bones continued to try to comfort him. The light in front of him turns red, pulling him back to the present. As he drives home, he picks apart the differences between last case and this case. Last case, she seemed detached, but this case she did everything she could in order to get as close as possible to a proper Muslim burial for the victim. She showed her pain this time, even if she did deflect from it afterwards.

_“Ya know it’s okay to be upset.”_

_“I wish this was the worst thing I’d seen.”_

That notion hurts him, even though it shouldn’t. To know she’s seen worse than a man whose remains can hardly be removed from the seat of his car causes Booth pain. He’s seen worse too. He understands how painful this world can be; he has seen people do terrible things to innocent people. But for some reason he doesn’t want Bones to recognize this reality. She may irritate him, but she’s also growing on him. He likes having her as his partner, and it means a lot to him that she’s starting to connect with him more emotionally throughout the cases.

He has another memory: “ _You’re solitary,” he says. “No, I’m private. It’s different,” Brennan replies._

If she’s not solitary, does that mean she has a boyfriend? Is that why she told him to go home to Tessa, so she could go home to someone too? He laughs at that thought. With how she reacted to seeing him shirtless, to seeing Tessa, he doesn’t think she’s seeing anyone. He saw her breath catch when he opened the door and he saw her face drop when Tessa came out in his shirt. It shouldn’t make him smile that Bones is jealous of Tessa, but it does. It eases the sting of her reminding him to go home to Tessa earlier that night.

And then he remembers: _“I don’t have a boyfriend.”_

That eases the sting a bit too. He told her that it was a sad indicator of the state of her personal life, but that’s only partially true.

It’s sad for her that she doesn’t have anyone to go home to.

It’s not sad for him that no one else gets to go home to her.

It’s sad for him that he doesn’t get to go home to her.

It’s not sad for her that she doesn’t have to go home to him.

He knows that she’s jealous of Tessa and that she’s single. But despite that knowledge, he doesn’t think she has any desire to be with him. “She had her chance,” he tells himself hoping that she’ll prove him wrong yet again.

Booth pulls up in front of his apartment. For a few minutes, he just sits there staring at the steering wheel. He knows he should be happy because his sexy girlfriend is cooking dinner as he sits there, but he isn’t. He knows this should be enough to make him happy, but it’s not. Eventually, he runs out of excuses to stay in his car, so he gets out and heads to his apartment. Before he opens his front door, he pauses again. He wonders if Bones is still at Wong Fu’s or if she’s gone home by now, too. He walks through his front door, bracing himself for the interaction that he knows will fall short of what he craves.

* * *

 

When she stood up to leave the bar, she was unsteady, but not because of the wine. It was Booth: her feelings for Booth, how he was acting before he left, and the fact that he has a girlfriend. Brennan can’t understand why this last thought upsets her so much. Booth is her partner, that’s it. She didn’t even want to be his partner until recently. She pushed aside the fact that she ran away from being his partner because he confessed that felt like they were “going somewhere.” 

As she’s leaving the Jeffersonian after identifying William Donohue’s remains, the feelings flood back to her. She doesn’t even know if she likes him yet, so it’s entirely irrational that she’s feeling jealous over the sight of that lawyer in lingerie and his shirt. When he answered the door with his shirt unbuttoned, the feelings from that first night in the bar flooded back to her.

_“If we don’t work together anymore, we could have sex.”_  

In that moment, she was thinking maybe she shouldn’t have gone home alone that night. Her mind goes back to their first kiss, and she wants to feel that again. She hates that Tessa has gotten to experience more with Booth than she has. “Stop it, Tempe,” she mutters to herself as she pulls onto the road. “You made your choice. You like the work you’re doing with him, so you can’t go back on that choice.” 

In spite of her typically hyper-rational demeanor, she can’t help but wish that she could have more with Booth. She knows it isn’t smart, knows she can’t give him any more power to hurt her, but she can’t help it. She wants more with Booth. She wants to be his friend. 

* * *

As he sits at the table eating dinner with Tessa, he can’t help but resent the fact that Bones sent him home to her. He hates that he feels like this, but when he could be with Bones, sitting at home with Tessa is the last thing he wants to do. He wanted to stay and have another drink with his partner.

More than resentment, though, he feels hurt. He thought they were getting closer, thought they were becoming friends. If he was right, then why did she send him home? Any other friend would have been more than happy to have another drink with him. 

Tessa’s hand on his arm pulls him out of his own head. “What was that?” he asks, forcing himself to keep thoughts of Bones out of his mind, at least until Tessa is asleep.

* * *

 

As she sits down on her couch, Brennan feels the sting of rejection Okay, she knows calling it rejection isn’t fair, but that’s what it feels like. She told him he should be going home to Tessa, and he actually left. Part of her was hoping that he’d stay anyway, that they’d have another drink together before they faced reality.

Although she would expect to find her thoughts lingering on Booth, Brennan can’t seem to keep away the thoughts of Tessa. It happened throughout the whole case. She knew Booth was annoyed that she kept mentioning Tessa, but she couldn’t force herself to stop. She hates that she’s letting this random woman occupy so much of her brain’s processing power right now. “She’s not random,” the thought flashes through Brennan’s mind. “She’s Booth’s girlfriend, she’s your partner’s girlfriend.”

“He’s just your partner, Tempe. You shouldn’t be feeling like this just because he has a girlfriend,” she says to herself.

In this moment, Brennan thinks back to her conversation with Tessa. _“I was studying a cranial fissure on an attorney last week…of course, he was dead,” Brennan says._ Even for her, this was bad. Looking back, she knows she shouldn’t have said that, she knows it was stupid. She isn’t great with people, but she usually isn’t this tremendously bad with them either.

She can’t figure out what it is about Tessa that is doing this to her. Temperance Brennan has never been one to place value on psychology, but she does find it weird that she cannot act like herself whenever she thinks of Tessa. And she can’t stop thinking about Tessa; that’s weird too. From the moment she found out Tessa existed, Brennan has been consumed by jealousy, which she has never experienced like this before. Her only respite came when she was actively working on the case or identifying her World War I remains.

Now that she’s back at home, she can’t force her thoughts away from this woman who is dating Booth.

* * *

 

As Booth washes the dinner dishes, his mind goes back to something Bones said earlier.

_“You think you understand women just because you live with a sexy lawyer?”_

He knows Bones is jealous of Tessa, even if she might not know it yet. On some level, it makes him happy—it makes him feel wanted—but it also makes him angry. Bones had a chance to be with him, and she left. So why does she keep bringing up Tessa? The whole case she barely stopped asking, from the moment she saw Tessa in his apartment. It frustrates him beyond belief. It makes him hold out hope that she might want to try being together one day. He knows that’s a ridiculous hope, so her jealousy frustrates him more than anything. He doesn’t want to be angry with her, so he tells himself to be flattered.

A smile crosses his face at the fact that he has two beautiful women—Bones and Tessa—who want him. At that moment, Tessa comes up behind him and turns off the water. She wraps her arms around him and presses her stomach to his back. She kisses his neck and mumbles in his ear that he should come to bed.

* * *

 

A smile flashes across Brennan’s mouth as she remembers what Angela told her. Tessa is threatened by her. It shouldn’t make her happy, but it does. She knows she can’t be in a relationship with Booth, but she enjoys knowing that a woman in Booth’s life— _the_ woman in Booth’s life—deems her close enough to Booth to be a threat to their relationship.

But she also recognizes that she needs to let Booth be happy. She made her choice, she left him alone that night, so she needs to let him live his life. Booth makes her happy, working with him makes her happy, so she wants to be in his life. In order for her to do that, she can’t be happy about being a threat to women in his life. She wants Booth to be happy, but she hates the thought that another woman might be the one making him happy.

* * *

 

He rolls onto his back, breathing heavy. He looks at the ceiling as he puts his arm around Tessa and she nestles into his body. She smiles at him sleepily before closing he eyes. As her breathing slows, he tries to replay the moment in his head. The moment where he closed his eyes and saw Bones in his bed, saw himself inside _her_ , instead of Tessa. He had tensed a bit at the thought, and Tessa sped up, thinking he was about to orgasm. Giving in to his impulse, he had closed his eyes and thought of Bones as he reached his climax. He caught himself with her name on his lips, so he leaned in and kissed Tessa as she followed his orgasm with her own.

Replaying this moment in his head, he knows he and Tessa can’t last much longer. Earlier he was resenting her because he had to leave Bones to go home to Tessa. Now he can’t even keep Brennan out of his thoughts while he’s fucking his girlfriend. “Dammit,” he thinks as he slowly moves Tessa’s head off of his chest and onto the pillow. He sneaks out of bed and into his bathroom, where he splashes water on his face. “She doesn’t want you, Booth,” he says as he looks at himself in the mirror. “She made it clear that first night and every night since. Hell, she showed it tonight when she reminded you to go home to Tessa instead of staying at Wong Fu’s and drinking with her.”

He doesn’t know why it hurts him so much that she reminded him that Tessa was waiting at his apartment. He doesn’t know why it hurts him that Bones even knows Tessa exists in the first place. It’s like he’s afraid that this information is going to hurt Bones, but he doesn’t know why it would do that either. As he walks back to bed, he shakes his head. “Your whole damn relationship with Bones is built on not knowing.”

* * *

 

Moving away from thoughts of Tessa, Brennan’s mind circles back to her conversation with Angela in her office. Angela had been trying to convince her to agree to weekend plans, but Brennan was resisting as usual:

_“We’ll grab Booth,” Angela says._

_“No!” Brennan exclaims._

_“I think he likes you.”_

“That was before we knew about Tessa, Tempe,” she tells herself halfheartedly. Her brain counters immediately though. “You know Angela still thinks he wants you, no matter who he goes home to at night.” She pours herself another glass of wine before going to her bedroom. As she gets ready for bed, she tries to follow the logic in this situation.

“Logic says that since Booth is with Tessa, he has feelings for her. Angela says he has feelings for me, though. I don’t see it, but Angela is much better at interpersonal relationships than I am. Which means logic also says that Angela’s belief has some credence to it.” She pauses for a moment as she sits on her bed and sips her wine. “Dammit,” she thinks. “The logic on one side is conflicting with the logic on the other side.” Rationally, she knows that pure logic states that Booth has feelings for Tessa. This time, however, she can’t seem to side with pure reason. She’s influenced by her emotions and by her trust in her best friend.

When she decides logic can’t answer this question for her, she finishes her glass of wine. As she goes to brush her teeth, she turns to the next best solution: evaluating the facts.

Fact: Booth is with Tessa.

Fact: That fact hurts Brennan

Fact: Booth wanted to stay at Wong Fu’s with Brennan.

Fact: That fact makes Brennan smile.

Fact: Booth went home to Tessa anyway.

Fact: That fact hurts the most.

Brennan climbs into bed and remembers why she poured that last glass of wine in the first place: logic and facts weren’t working for her tonight. She feels conflicted and rolls onto her side, hoping sleep will come quickly.

* * *

 

Booth climbs back into bed, but makes no move to pull Tessa back into his arms like he typically would. He feels dishonest holding her when all he seems to want is Bones. Part of him, his conscience maybe, tells him he should end things with Tessa if all he can think of is Bones. Being with one woman when he wants another isn’t right, and he knows that. But he tries to convince himself that his feelings for Bones will fade as he realizes she doesn’t want him and vows to try to work things out with Tessa.

Even as he falls asleep, he knows the relationship is doomed, but that won’t stop him from trying to salvage it.

* * *

 

Sleep has not come quickly and two hours later, Brennan is still tossing and turning. She’s never been like this before. Well, at least not since she aged out of foster care. But certainly never over a man. The realization that Booth is doing something to her that no other man has ever been able to do unsettles her even further. She groans as she rolls onto her stomach and presses her face into the pillow, trying to forget about Booth.

Instead, her brain does the opposite. She starts remember things about Booth that she hadn’t thought of since the case ended.

_“Booth says you’re the best.”_ She hears the Homeland Security agent’s words ring in her head, and they soothe her. She doesn’t want them to soothe her, but they do nonetheless.

No matter what happens between them personally, Booth has faith in her professional capabilities. She _is_ the best, that much is simply a fact, but knowing that Booth says it brightens her mood a bit. “Our partnership is sound,” she thinks. “If he knows I’m the best and called me to work with him again, that means he still thinks we’re partners, even though I said we weren’t during the last case.”

“He fought to work with you when you came back from Guatemala. He wants to work with you.” As she tells herself this, she feels herself begin to fall asleep.

Her final thoughts before she falls asleep are not purely peaceful, though. “He shared part of his past with you, Tempe,” she thinks in an effort to comfort herself of her place in his life, regardless of his romantic partner. The thought has a different effect, however. “His balance sheet,” she remembers. “We threw it off today when he had to kill Farid.” Suddenly, she tries to keep a tally of how she has played into his cosmic balance sheet. She helped him put away Cleo Eller and Gemma Arrington’s killers. That makes up for two of the lives he had to take in the Army. Technically she helped him with Hamid Masruk’s killer as well, but he had to kill Farid. So today she helped Booth add another name to the list of lives he’d taken.

She falls asleep thinking of whether she did enough to support him, knowing he struggled with the morality of his actions. Across town, Booth knows that she did as much as she could for him and his balance sheet on this case. He doesn’t know how much it matters to her whether what she did was enough, though. He doesn’t understand how deeply she’s grown to care for him over their short partnership. And that leaves both of them feeling unsettled, each feeling like they care more than the other does.

 

 

 


End file.
